Abstract:

There is no single definition for human factor in the literature. These factors have been identified as contributing factors to accidents, but there is no agreement, what these factors are. In this work, human factor is defined as factors that affect human performance and their contribution to property losses is investigated. The aim of this work is to help insurance companies to understand the nature of accidents and human factor contribution to them.

16 major losses that have occurred in chemical, food and construction industry, were investigated. Major losses were investigated by interviewing employees involved in claims adjusting and by analysing the available documents of the losses. Interviews were based on HFACS in order to identify the human factors. Additionally, statistics of all reported claims were compiled.

Various types of human factors were identified as contributing factors for major losses. The complex nature of accidents was emphasised in the research. Contributing factors interact with each other with unknown mechanisms. There is no single root cause for accidents although some similarities were identified. Organisational factors were strongly linked to major losses: maintenance failures in chemical industry, risk management failures related to hot work in food industry and poor quality of work in construction industry. In order to prevent accidents, improvement is required on each level of an organisation. On the basis of this research, improving the reporting of both large and small claims to observe the human factors, was recommended. The modified HFACS used in this work could be the basis of the reporting system.Inhimilliselle tekijälle ei ole vakiintunutta määritelmää kirjallisuudessa. Nämä tekijät on tunnistettu onnettomuuksien taustalla, mutta yksimielisyyttä siitä, mitä nämä tekijät ovat, ei ole. Inhimillinen tekijä määritellään tässä työssä tekijäksi, joka vaikuttaa ihmisen suorituskykyyn. Tässä työssä tutkitaan näiden tekijöiden roolia omaisuusvahinkojen lähteenä. Työn tarkoituksena on auttaa vakuutusyhtiöitä ymmärtämään paremmin onnettomuuksien luonnetta ja inhimillisen tekijän osuutta niihin.